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About 70 years ago, two little French kids found themselves under a table looking up at a German soldier who was asking the curly headed child, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" He asked this because that child had just told the other, based on what the soldier was saying a minute ago, that the soldier was thirsty and wanted some water. This child knew what the soldier was saying because, unlike the other child under the table, he spoke Yiddish. This child knew Yiddish because that's what European Jews spoke at home back in the day. In other words, this soldier was asking that French child if he was Jewish by asking him if he knew German. And when that little kid slowly shook his head no, the soldier must have figured he was lying, and that this child was what he and his fellow soldiers were looking for in that apartment building that morning. So maybe the soldier was tired. Or maybe he was lazy, or negligent. Perhaps he was mad at his superior, and didn't feel like giving him another notch in his unit's belt. Or maybe this was the soldier's moment of compassion. We will never know why he simply shook his head and walked away that morning, leaving those petrified children behind to live another day. But, unlike Anne Frank and millions of other children in hiding during the war, and the families who hid them (e.g., the other kid and his family), these two children did make it. Fifteen years later, the curly headed kid was grown up and had a child of his own. That was me. I'll tell you one of the salient memories of my upbringing: No matter what trouble I caused my dad, no matter what I pulled on him (and I cringe when I think back on all the shit I pulled, especially as a teenager), no matter how much I complained about school or friends or spending my weekends cleaning up the house and fixing up the yard as if I were a victim of forced labor, he always reacted the same way--he laughed. It wasn't mocking laughter or sardonic laughter. It was a happy laugh, as if I was really being funny. It pissed me off, but that only got him to laugh harder. It wasn't until I was almost in college that I even knew what a Holocaust survivor was, and that my dad was one of them. Because he was so young at the time--eight years old when France was liberated--he is now one of the last remaining survivors with any memory of the Nazi occupation. Here he is recently giving a talk at the Holocaust Museum in Washington: My dad doesn't always laugh or even smile. He has gone through the same ups and downs as anyone. He was especially hard hit by the loss of my mom--his wife of 47 years. But the look on his face here is his default countenance, a hint of a smile, as if the slightest thing could send him into laughter. I now realize that my dad was laughing because he could, because all the little shit that we think is important or crucial or oh-my-god-now-what is small potatoes compared to the wonderful opportunity to fret about it. The unwitting gift of that German soldier was not just a life, but an appreciation of what life enables us to experience--the good and the bad. My dad truly enjoys his life. And that life, and appreciation, was a gift to his generations, too. When my kids came along, I found myself doing the same thing--laughing as much when they were peeved as when they were cheery. At first, it was probably the unconscious mimicry of behavior modeled by my dad. But when I thought about why it seemed so natural for me to laugh off their occasional tantrums as easily as I rejoiced in their cheer, I realized that it was precisely because my kids were capable ''of frustration, and joy, and the full spectrum of childhood experiences, reactions, and emotions. They were fully alive, and that made me so happy I literally could not contain myself. I don't know how far this gets passed down. I hope my kids enjoy their lives; they seem to, so far. I don't think I can make them or anyone happy, even myself. I wish I could tell you how to be happy. Maybe it's a realization. Maybe it's a choice. Maybe it's how we're wired. Maybe it's a close call, where you are staring death in the face and it chooses for mysterious reasons to shrug and walk away, that gets you to permanently see things in another light. I don't have the answer to that. But I can answer your question: Yes, I actually enjoy life. -- Yes. I want you to look at this photo of the world's tallest stacked pile of pig iron. It's from Wikipedia, and it's very nice. See, when you're trying to take a good photo, there's a lot to think about. Lens, light, filters, perspective, composition, timing, permits, thieves, alimony, and the list goes on. Looking through the viewfinder, you're not in the world. You're in your head. Like the photographer, you're looking but you're not really seeing. You look at life and complain that life is full of pain, and while life is punctuated by great moments, you don't enjoy it as a whole. What I see is you looking through the viewfinder of life waiting for the opportunity to press the button to capture what you want, but when you finally do, the feeling doesn't last because you're already looking for the next opportunity. Or you're looking at the past, going over and over your long list of missed opportunities trying to work out when you should have pressed the button, and who to blame. Or you're imagining what life will be like when everything falls into place. That curiously timeless moment when everything is perfect is especially pernicious. Guess what? None of it's real. It's all in your head. What you're not enjoying is not actually, well, life. What you're not enjoying is comparing your life to constantly shifting ideals you will never reach, revisiting the past you can not change, and always wanting more ''even while you are getting what you want. What you're not enjoying are fantasies, very normal ones I might add, which are typically much more compelling than the simple, humble, often very dull reality of life. Sure, there's pain and greatness, but they're two points on a rich spectrum of all kinds of mediocrity. In the grand scheme of things, you will be fine. Mostly other people are lying, or more properly are self-deluded, but some are telling the truth. Yes, there are people who enjoy life, but not equally all the time - why would you want to? And yes, others secretly and not-so-secretly think that life is overrated, including myself. Life becomes a much more enjoyable ride once you stop confusing it with what you thought it was, or what you wish it would become, and simply let it be what it is. Acceptance (not to be confused with passivity) is your ticket to wherever you need to go. I also suggest you leave the camera at home. Buy postcards. -- One of the reasons I started listening carefully to people was because I wanted to understand if others really were happier than me or if they were just faking it. Here's what I've learned: Compassion makes you deep and resonant. Depth reduces suffering about your personal problems and resonance opens you to joy. ---- Step One Compassion (vs. Pity or Empathy) First of all, it is ''hard and painful to be alive. We don't get what we want, we get what we don't want and all the while things keep changing and fading away. If you have ever had your heart broken or lost someone you love, you know the way emotional pain can move around inside you - shutting your throat, twisting in your stomach, pressing down on your heart. This traveling pain is my definition of suffering - "emotion" comes from the Latin ''emovere,''which literally means to move.* '''Suffering:' Suffering is a scouring substance - it wears our protection away and gets at our raw nerve endings, but at the same time it expands or deepens our interior selves. This concept is reflected in the description of people as deep or shallow. It's not enough to merely be exposed to pain, depth is created when person is able to experience and process it*. The relativity of suffering means that emotional pain is experienced in relation to a person's depth. For example, if someone is shallow, small pains will fill them almost completely; a prom queen's broken fingernail can be an epic and overwhelming tragedy. On the other hand, people who have suffered more have a bigger maximum capacity - if our prom queen has experienced losing her mother to breast cancer, the broken nail will probably seem like a trivial event. Until compassion develops, we understand other people's suffering on a numeric scale. Here's an example: Pity: Pity happens when observed suffering is greater than the observer's depth. For example, someone who is quite shallow (say they have a depth of five) ''will have no way to sympathize with someone experiencing a ''200 ''loss. Instead they will feel distant and different from the sufferer who in turn feels isolated and pathetic in their presence. '''Empathy:' As depth increases someone may experience empathy instead of pity. Empathy allows us to remember an equivalent amount of suffering inside ourselves. If an empathetic person sees someone suffering at say 100 ''(a broken heart) they remember what ''100 ''feels like to them and use this to resonate with the sufferer. An empathetic person who sees someone suffering at ''one ''often decides that ''one ''is not worth suffering over and may say something like "get over it." '''Compassion:' But compassion is a ratio, based on capacity. A compassionate person looks at the sufferer and resonates with how filled with pain they are. So when a great soul (with a depth of 100,000) feels compassion for the distressed prom queen (with a depth of 5), they don't experience 1 out a possible 100,000 - what they feel is 20%. They have no problem sitting on the bench in the bathroom with their arm around her as she sobs. The compassionate person does not''remember'' a 20,000 pain, they experience it anew. This works to further deepen them in a way that empathy does not. Which is to say, the more compassionate a person is, the more they suffer for others but the less they suffer from what happens to themselves. 'What I learned by listening, is that most people have not experienced much compassion in their life. Instead they have been met with either pity or empathy. All this circles back to your question. Most people pretend to be ceaselessly happy because they worry that they will either experience pity or be told to "get over it" - in other words they worry that their suffering is either too big or too small. ' People I listen to tell me they hide their pain. But they also hide their joy. They don't want to make people jealous, or be seen as bragging or unseemly. As it turns out, real authentic joy is happening all the time. This is a tough planet but it is also quite beautiful and surprising. The way to get in on all this astounding goodness is to develop Sympathetic Joy. ---- Step Two: Sympathetic Joy Sympathetic Joy is the sister and companion of compassion. After a while of practicing compassion we realize that suffering is not the only experience we resonate with. Sympathetic joy occurs when we resonate with another person's delight. In it's purest form sympathetic joy is why we laugh and smile when we watch a baby laugh and smile. It's why we can watch someone open "the best present ever!" and feel happy even though we didn't get it ourselves. Here is a sympathetic joy video. If compassion reminds us that suffering is universal, sympathetic joy reminds us that right now someone has just caught the biggest fish of their life, someone just aced the test, someone is whispering support, someone just got results that says they don't have cancer, someone has invited someone to the party, someone has caught someone's eye, someone is dancing, someone is making love, someone is laughing their ass off. * As opposed to numbing to pain or passing it on (Diane Meriwether's answer to Why do certain people derive pleasure from doing cruel things to their fellow human beings?)